


“You’re mine.”

by jojojoji



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: (in your face joseph), And i will give it to him, Drabbles, F/M, Requests, all of the seedlings live, and called john to pick him up, and zz top's beard, badass rook, drabble prompts, eli palmer needs more love, in this christian minecraft server, merciful rook, mountain man with a heart of gold, or die trying, pining eli, pining rook, possessive rook, prompts, rook spared jacob, that is the will of the father, that's right folks, this beautiful selfless man is being stepped on, to fix him up nice and proper, to take him to his ranch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 17:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojojoji/pseuds/jojojoji
Summary: Pratt breaks Rook out of St. Francis’, but after seeing the plans that Jacob has in-store for her - for Eli - she doesn’t take it well. As a matter of fact, she decides it’s about time she takes matters into her own hands, once and for all.TL:DR - Rook does the logical thing when a single song triggers a fugue, homicidal state. Wears. Fucking. Earphones. You’ve heard march to the beat of your own drum? This is killing to the beat of your own jam.





	“You’re mine.”

Eli doesn’t like how hard you push yourself.

Don’t get him wrong, he’s grateful - God, is he grateful - for you.

The Whitetails wouldn’t have lasted longer than a week before you’d shown up, liberating three cult outposts, rescuing a grand total of fifty civilians and freeing not only the master huntress, Jess Black, but their lovable, diabetic grizzly bear of a mascot, Cheeseburger.

All before you’d so much as set foot in The Wolf’s Den.

He’ll never forget the grin that tweaked the corners of your mouth when he’d said just as much.

“I‘ve got a penchant for showing up at the last second. Late for the show, early for the encore. Yet to disappoint.”

But you’re doing too much.

You’re liberating outposts left-and-right, destroying wolf beacons to cinder and ash, freeing civilians, blowing up supply trucks, helping out anyone and everyone you stumble across. 

The list goes on.

He isn’t complaining - you’ve earned Tammy’s trust, Wheaty’s awe and The Whitetails faith with each and every task you accomplish - but he doesn’t know how you‘re still standing.

One day, when he asks you, you ask him the same thing.

“You think I look bad? You oughta look in the mirror, mountain man. The bags under your eyes have bags.”

The only time you agree to sleep is if he does, too.

“The surveillance cameras don’t stop recording if you aren’t watching them, y’know.”

Tammy and Wheaty offer to take his shift while the two of you rest (he decidedly ignores Tammy’s subtle wink and Wheaty’s mile-wide grin when you lace your fingers through his, tugging him out of the surveillance room).

With more and more folks joining the militia with every day that passes, with your influential heroics reigniting the spark of faith - of fight - that’d started to smolder in the last few months, The Wolf’s Den is starting to fill-up, meaning that, more often than not, the two of you end up sharing a bed.

Which‘d started off innocent enough, with the two of you on your respective sides, but within minutes, you’re nestled under his chin, cozying up to him as content as you please, like you’d been doing this for years.

The first few times, Eli had tensed-up - not because the touch was unwanted, the polar opposite, actually - but he found himself melting into your touch without any trouble.

Literally.

You‘re a furnace. With the frigid, merciless winds of winter rolling through the mountains, seeping into the depths of the bunker…

There is nothing more satisfying, more comforting, more delicious than cradling the savior of Hope County, the crowning soldier of The Whitetail Militia, the humble deputy in his arms.

There are words on the tip of his tongue that threaten to spill out in these small moments, in these snapshots of intimacy, in these polaroids of tranquility, peace, comfort, because he’s come to realize that you’re more than just a deputy, more than just a soldier, more than just a friend.

But he swallows those words down, into the depths of his chest where they beat against his ribs to be let out, to be heard. Because you have a job to do, both of you do, and throwing such a heavy, loaded spanner in the mix isn’t an option.

He will say those words, one day. When he’s sure that it won’t ruin the best thing he’s had in a long time.

For now, he’s more than content with having you in his arms, feeling the steady rise and fall of your chest against his, where it isn’t The Leader of The Whitetails and The Face of The Resistance.

It’s just Eli and Rook.

•

One night, when your fingers are bunched in his shirt, your lips against his throat, your calm heart thumping against his rapid one, Eli promises himself that he’ll let those words spill, roll the dice, let the cards fall where they may.

Because you and him have been living, surviving, enduring this hell long enough to know that tomorrow isn’t always a given.

He would say them right now if you didn’t look so peaceful, if this wasn’t the first time you’d had a fitful’s night of sleep in over two weeks, if he was petrified of losing this forever.

Next time, he promises himself, as his arms tighten around your waist, smiling softly as you sigh into his touch, bury your face in his collar.

Next time.

•

You’ve dropped off the radar.

Scratch that, you’ve dropped off the face of the earth.

Nobody’s caught as much as a glimpse or heard as little as a whisper about you.

Fifteen days have passed since he’s last seen you, heard you, held you.

Since Eli had made the solemn vow to confess how much he cares about you, how much he worries about you, how much he loves you the next time you walked in The Wolf’s Den.

Of course, he assumes the worst. Jacob must’ve caught you again. The fucking bastard.

Eli was nearing the brink of destroying every last piece of equipment n the surveillance room because there wasn’t a single minute, second, frame of you in any of the footage.

Wheaty and Tammy are able to calm him down - it wasn’t the stern, no-nonsense glare from Tammy, but the trembling, anxious form of Wheaty that has Eli calming down, storming out of the room and leaving The Wolf’s Den.

He has his weapons with him. He’s more than ready to go looking for you himself. His teeth grind at the prospect of storming through that goddamn veteran’s center, killing each and every one of his forsaken Chosen and bringing his deputy home.

Fifteen days have passed, Eli is minutes away from climbing into his car and hauling-ass to St. Francis, but then - just as he’s about to open the door, your voice crackles over the radio at three o’ clock in the morning that Tuesday.

“Eli.”

The relief that courses through him is staggering, has him clutching the door handle for dear life, to cement himself, to prove that this was real and he’d really heard your voice.

“Rook? Thank Christ. Where have you been? We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for—“

“You can’t let me back in The Wolf’s Den.”

The blood drains from his body, leaving him cold and hollow from the severity of your tone.

He’s never heard you sound so solemn.

“What?”

“Eli, it’s you. Pratt broke me out of the cages, right after a trial, right before the final trial, and he showed me Jacob’s plans. The trials, the slaughtering, the culling - he wants me to lead him to The Wolf’s Den. He wants me to kill you.

There’s a pause. Heavy, eerie, dark. But the silence is pierced by a macabre chuckle, a twisted snicker.

“It’s you, Eli. It was always you… Only you.”

That isn’t what disturbs Eli.

What troubles him to the core, to the foundation, is the scathing, harsh laughter that colors your voice in shades of mania.

“Rook—“

“You can’t let me in. Under any circumstances. Have the hatches locked at all times. Make a secret knock or password for the militia - do not give them to me. Always have someone watching the surveillance cameras - not just you. Switch out with someone every few hours. A fresh pair of eyes catches strange activity faster than an exhausted one.”

“What about you, Rook? The Wolf’s Den is the safest place in The Whitetails. This— this is your home. You’re going to be looking over your shoulder all day, every day, until what?”

“Until that fucking music box is in pieces, his fucking Chosen are torn apart by his Judges and Jacob Seed is knocked off his fucking pedestal.”

“How will we know when?”

“Trust me, you’ll know. There’ll be a special little broadcast across every station when The Mountains are safe again. But if you see me in The Wolf’s Den before that - fuck, if I’m within a 100-foot radius of it - you put me down, then and there.”

“Rook, you can’t be serious—“

“Then and there, Eli. I’ve already told Tammy, and she’s telling the rest of the militia, because I know you’d hesitate, but you can’t. You don’t get it… When that song comes on, when you’re in that fugue state, you don’t see faces - just targets that need to be put down… For fuck’s sake, Eli… I wouldn’t even know if I’d killed you until the song ended.”

“Rook, please. There has to be another way. We can keep you here until it blows over, have our guys storm the center—“

“You know as well as I do that our boys don’t stand a chance against his fucking Chosen, let alone the Judges. He wants me to kill you, Eli. I won’t let that happen.

There’s only one way this ends. He’s taken a lot of things from me, but I won’t let him take you… You’re mine. I‘ll die before I let anything happen to you.”

“Rook…”

“Doors locked. Passwords implemented. Radios on. Do not respond if you receive a call from my frequency. The ‘all-clear’ will be broadcasted through the local station. Over and out.”

“Rook? Rook?!”

•

Ten days later, the broadcast comes.

Jacob Seed is presumed dead and his bunker, along with all of the men inside, has been blown to hell.

Joseph’s eulogy for his brother follows not long after, but Eli couldn’t give less of a shit about it when Deputy Staci Pratt stumbles down the steps of the bunker with you clinging to his side with what little strength you have left, wearing three bloody bullet holes alongside a weary, sheepish, crimson smile.

“Honey, I’m home.”

•

Wheaty and Tammy take Pratt to get something to eat, to bandage him up, to play the reverse-conditioning tune you’ve had playing in your ears for the last ten days.

You’d taken a note from Jordan Peele’s brilliant film, Get Out - stuffing cotton balls in your ears to block out the noise of the song.

That, in addition to the wireless earbuds beneath them that were playing a potpourri of hard rock, heavy metal and the reverse-conditioning tune (which played at least three times an hour, every twenty minutes - you know every lyric, every chord, every snare to the fucking thing and if you have to hear it one more time, you will jab rusty ice picks in your eardrums.) 

You’d beaten Jacob Seed black-and-blue to the tune of Killing in the Name Of by Rage Against The Machine, blasting at full power, which would’ve been the perfect song for the occasion.

Had you actually killed him.

As it is, the two of you nearly beat each other to death, but you ultimately ended up as the winner. A.) Because Jacob had strength but you had speed and stamina and B.) He’s a god with a rifle, but he’s a mortal in hand-to-hand.

With three oozing bullet holes, it was a relatively fair fight.

•

News spread fast. The Whitetails think he’s dead, that his wolves had torn apart his carcass - poetic justice or some shit like that.

You don’t mention that you’d called John to come pick him up.

That Jacob had clipped you three times with his fucking rifle - that marksman title wasn’t just a fancy label - before you’d snuck up from behind him, hurled his rifle over the cliff and fought with your bare hands (and knives, him with his Bowie knife and you with your unsuspecting Italian switchblade).

You’d won. Obviously. Would’ve been over-the-moon, gloating like a son of a bitch, had you not had other matters to attend to. Namely, Jacob bitching at you to ‘cull the herd’, ‘get rid of the weak’, ‘finish the deed’. 

You might’ve fractured your knuckles from how hard you punched him, but it’d knocked him out cold and given you a nice respite from the fucking ‘cull the herd’ speech. 

When John arrives, whistling low in his throat at the dozens of bodies scattered around the cliff, it takes the both of you combined to lift Jacob’s unconscious deadweight into John’s Mustang. John isn’t surprised – he’d believed you when you said you wouldn’t kill him, because you’d spared him and Faith after all. But he does ask you if you’ll need help.

With one lingering, final look at Jacob, who’s slouched in the passenger seat, you tug the bunker key from his neck and bid him adieu with a cursory wave over your shoulder. 

Rescue Pratt. That was the only - the final - objective.

You’ll deal with the fallout of refusing to kill any of the Seeds later.

•

Right now, you’re just excruciatingly tired and just a smidge sore.

Three bullet wounds tend to do that.

You haven’t asked Pratt what he’s been through and you don’t really have to guess.

Eli drags you straight to the med-bay, something that you’d complain about the whole way there, even as he was tending to your wounds, claiming that they were less than nothing, that the stitches and bandages oughta be used for the folks that really need them.

This time isn’t any different, as you begrudgingly mumble under your breath, things along the lines of, “Really? This is how the savior of the mountains is treated?” and “Worst. Welcome home celebration. Ever.”

Eli can’t even crack a smile. Though you’re here, tangible and alive and snarking, he can’t forget how terrified he was that he would never see you again, never hold you again, never get the chance to tell you those three little words that weighed more than anything in the world because this is the deputy that risked her life time-and-time again to help a county she had no idea existed just three months before, the friend that helped Eli get through his tough days, that rekindled the spark of hope, faith, strength that had started to wane before your arrival, the girl he was head-over-heels in love with.

“What the hell were you thinking? Facing off against Jacob, with three gunshot wounds, and then heading straight for his bunker?!”

He doesn’t mean to come off aggressive or angry, but he can’t help it. You do reckless shit all the time, but this takes the cake.

You don’t miss a beat, even as he’s pouring rubbing alcohol into the bullet holes, hissing your answer out through gritted teeth as the sting soaks through the skin, the flesh, the tissue.

“What was I supposed to do? Call a timeout? Staci was trapped in his bunker, Eli. I wasn’t going to leave him to rot.”

He doesn’t say anything after that. Neither do you. He simply cleans out your wounds - thoroughly, softly apologizing whenever he catches you wince out of the corner of his eye.

The three bullets that had ripped through you had clean entry and exits, but two of them were going to need stitches - the shoulder and belly.

As Eli readies the needle and thread, sterilizing them and your skin with rubbing alcohol, he decides now wouldn’t be the absolute worst time to bring up the discussion that he’d been obsessing over since you’d went dark ten days ago.

He clears his throat.

You raise an eyebrow. “Want me to do it? I’ve got an incredibly steady hand, you know,” you wink, igniting a flame to his cheeks, that has you laughing lightly, albeit breathlessly, with all the blood you’ve lost.

The IV and blood transfusions oughta ve fixing that in no time, but it’s good to know that - even when your gaping wounds are about to be sewn shut with nothing but a bottle of bourbon for a pain reliever, your humor could never be extinguished.

“What you said… Over the radio…” He starts, unsure how to proceed, as he begins sewing your shoulder.

For the first time in your acquaintanceship, friendship, relationship - Eli watches as a blush takes to your pale face.

“Yeah, so?” You ask, petulantly, like a child who’d told their crush they liked them on the playground, body tense, muscles rigid, waiting for rejection or scorn.

The idea that you think he’d reject you - that he didn’t want you - breaks his heart to pieces.

He takes his time to formulate his response, finds the words he wants to say as he finishes the last suture on your stomach.

“... It’s a two-way street, Rook.”

You look up at him, confused, as he gently tapes bandages to your stitched shoulder and belly, before he’s laying a delicate kiss above the crisp material.

Your breath stalls in your chest - not in pain, but in surprise, disbelief, hope.

Eli lifts his face, mahogany eyes meeting pools of whiskey, his shoulders squared, his jaw set his hand taking yours, squeezing tightly, as he brings your knuckles to his lips, kissing them lightly.

“I’m yours. Completely and absolutely. Which means that you’re mine.”

Eli has never seen you beam so brightly.

Eli has never seen you smile so wide.

Eli has never seen a more beautiful sight.

“Completely and absolutely, sir.”

The crimson hue that dusts his cheeks whenever you address him as such doesn’t fail, but before that cheeky grin can curl up the corners of your mouth, he’s tilting your head up and kissing you.

Eli Palmer isn’t a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, but he swears that he’s tasted a slice of heaven when you lick his lips open, clutch at his shirt with your uninjured hand, smile against his mouth.

Completely and absolutely.


End file.
